Post by bjd on Sept 10, 2015 16:36:19 GMT

I don't think they would put that picture on the cover of Time. Maybe somewhere inside but I'm sure they would consider it too shocking and get a lot of negative reactions from readers.

And I imagine it would be awful for the family to see the dead child repeatedly.

Yesterday I read that the Red Cross in Toulouse is looking for volunteers to help refugees with administrative forms. I tried to get through but their answering machines are overloaded, so I sent an email specifying that I speak English, but am still waiting for an answer. I guess they got lots of people volunteering for a small number of refugees here.

Post by bixaorellana on Sept 10, 2015 16:44:04 GMT

Quite honestly, I am very glad this thread has gone to page two so I don't see the little boy each time I open it. The photo is still emotionally devastating, but will probably lose its impact by repeated exposure.

Post by kerouac2 on Sept 11, 2015 17:31:42 GMT

Paris got its first new refugees today in the 13th arrondissement. Frankly, I am skeptical that the 18th arrondissement will get to benefit from any of these classy and well educated Syrians because we are alredy pretty much full up with our Eritreans, Sudanese and Congolese who have a considerably harder time adapting to European urban lifestyles. But I think that they will benefit in the end, just because the government is now having to make an effort in the refugee handling department. And of course the general population is becoming more motivated to help them as well.

Post by mich64 on Sept 11, 2015 19:41:49 GMT

I remember in 1979/1980 Canada taking in about 50,000 Vietnamese people, the term at the time was "boat people". I was in high school when they came in 1979/80 and remember it well, I wish I knew how many were sent to our City. Our School Board arranged for portable classrooms to be connected by a covered passageway behind our school. I remember seeing the students the first few days looking scared and confused and whispering among one another to weeks later, them laughing and hearing many of them speaking in their language in what seemed happiness and excitement.

They remained with us for the school year but I do not remember them in my senior year as I believe they were slowly placed all throughout the Province that summer. I think a few families did decide to stay but I think most moved to southern Ontario where there were more opportunities and better cultural links. I think they were brought here because we had a large Air Force Base where temporary housing was available. Our Mayor is currently fund raising for our City to sponsor a family from Syria, I guess now that our Air Force Base has been downsized we do not have the facilities we once had.

Post by bixaorellana on Sept 11, 2015 20:08:58 GMT

Interesting comments about assimilation, Kerouac & Mich.

Mich, you made me remember when the "boat people" arrived in the US. Quite a few of them came to Louisiana via Catholic Charities. I remember hearing how some families got relocated to places like Kansas & thinking how difficult that kind of environment must have been for them. At least Louisiana had the right climate! Many of those Vietnamese who were fisherman back home settled in SW Lousiana. Years later, in the early 90s, we were going west on the Intracoastal waterway. Whole areas had waterside stores and boathouses with signs in Vietnamese and were manned by people of Vietnamese descent. There were oil field helicopters flying overhead. My husband, a Vietnam era veteran, quipped, "This is a very realistic flashback!"

Edited to add that link is showing up normally on Preview, but not working when posted. Thanks, V5! Here it is if anyone wants to copy & paste. www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20074282,00.html

Post by mich64 on Sept 11, 2015 21:17:10 GMT

Sorry to report that I can not see your links Bixa, a 404 error code for each.

I think the immigrants that came here were quite surprised about their first winter in Canada, and maybe a little happier if they were lucky enough to land in Vancouver. I understand Kerouac's comment about how the immigrants are trying to go where they want, versus in the past, they were sent to areas that were taking in crisis immigrants, choices were probably the least of their priorities in those times.

I imagine the Vietnamese immigrants had flashbacks hearing the helicopters flying overhead everyday like your husband did during those years as well, even though they were now in a safe place, but like your husband, those memories would take a long time to fade, if ever.

Post by questa on Sept 11, 2015 23:51:52 GMT

Australia had refugee boats landing on our shores from the mid 70s on. The stories of piracy and deprivation and their treatment back in Vietnam (and their obvious anti-Communist stance)caused the governments of those days to take them in.

The Vietnamese went through the usual stages of establishing themselves, from manual workers to small businesses to higher education until now the Governor of my state, many of our top professional people, performing artists etc are the same people who came in the overloaded fishing boats.

There is a story of 3 Ozzie blokes out fishing in Darwin Harbour when a Vietnamese fishing boat putters past them heading for the land. The men up anchor and motor over to the other boat to find it full of refugees. "Welcome to Australia" they said and handed over their beer supplies for the day.

Travel! Set out and head for pastures new[br] Life tastes the richer when you’ve road worn feet.[br]Ibn Battuta[br]

Post by kerouac2 on Sept 12, 2015 6:26:02 GMT

France also absorbed 150,000 boat people in 1979 and I cannot recall any complaints about it then. A few thousand Hmong even went (voluntarily) all the way to French Guiana in South America which it was determined that the tropical conditions there were identical to their homeland in Laos. They now represent 2% of the population in their four villages and are the biggest producers of fruits and vegetables in the département, delivering 60 tonnes of produce every week to the market in Cayenne.

Unlike the boat people of metropolitan France, who are now mostly completely French, the Hmong don't mix very much with the other populations of Guiana, except during the Rambutan Festival.

Post by kerouac2 on Sept 14, 2015 21:22:45 GMT

The link from The Guardian has really excellent photos, Bixaorellana, but my mother painted such excellent (and horrifying) word pictures when I was a child that I have never required real photographs to imagine the terror of being a refugee. I think that perhaps her worst story was about she and her parents leaving a train that was stopped "indefinitely" and going to find a place in town to sleep for the night, even though almost nobody else wanted to leave the train because they thought it might start moving again. But my grandfather worked for the railroad and knew that it was not going anywhere even though none of the other passengers wanted to believe him. Some local people allowed them to sleep in their cellar, and they were quite happy to be underground, because there was a major air raid during the night. The next morning, they returned to the train to get their suitcases and found that the train had been strafed and everybody on board was dead.

Tonight's evening news on France 2 had another grim report that greatly upset me, even though it just concerned a tiny part of the trip from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos. The reporters managed to talk their way on to a boat taking 60 passengers at night. The passers wanted them to pay, but in the end they were allowed to board free of charge while the others had all paid at least 1000 euros for the trip. The boat was an old lifeboat from an ocean liner with a motor. The boat left the Turkish coast after just an ordinary refugee had been put in charge, and the passer's employee dived into the water and swam back to shore. there were lots of families with children, and the youngest passenger was just two months old. It was decided that they should go as slowly as possible because the sea was not very calm and they did not want to take any unnecessary risks even though they were very impatient. The report shows the frightened crying children and also seasick passengers and the worried looks of all of the adults. And then the motor of the boat died.

The reporters had the only mobile phone that worked, so they called for help and finally a small fishing boat showed up. It managed to tow them to Lesbos where all of the passengers got off and were taken care of. But of course this was only a very tiny part of their journey and they still had to get transportation to Athens and beyond. None of them is anywhere close to reaching the German Eldorado or any other part of Western Europe yet, and everybody between there and here will try to stop them.

Post by kerouac2 on Sept 15, 2015 6:04:18 GMT

Post by rikita on Sept 15, 2015 11:05:00 GMT

every time i read about this it makes me feel so sad and helpless, there is always this thought "i have to do something", but i can't really think of what - if i had a bigger apartment, i'd offer to house someone, as quite a few people apparently are doing ... just got an email that my company is offering to match employee donations up to a certain sum, so i am considering donating there (though normally i'd have donated to a different organisation). it feels quite strange to know how some of these things happen so close to home (like i read some articles about the chaotic situation in front of the registring office here) and at the same time it's possible to go through everyday life without noticing anything different. and yeah, any photo or story about children is especially heart breaking, as for them it must be so confusing and scary to suddenly have to go on this journey, and notice the fear of the adults around them ...

Post by bjd on Sept 15, 2015 18:22:05 GMT

About an hour after I posted the above, I got a mail from the Red Cross. They indeed said there was a big response and volunteers have to sign up for a few hours training about form-filling and counseling.

Post by mossie on Sept 18, 2015 14:14:43 GMT

Sorry, but I cannot have any sympathy for the majority of these "refugees".When one sees newsreels of hundreds of fit young men charging through borders when they should be resisting the forces which are threatening their homelands, one realises they are simple opportunists taking the cowards way out.That has put the cat among the pigeons, as the old saying has it.

Post by onlyMark on Sept 18, 2015 15:09:44 GMT

Post by kerouac2 on Sept 18, 2015 16:29:39 GMT

Yes, they're still saying that about the Jews in Germany. If they had any balls, they would have stayed to fight Hitler. And of course the Armenians, the Spanish Republicans, the Indochinese, the Chileans, the Argentinians and all the others of the 20th century. Just slam the door in everybody's face. They'll be happy to do the same to us when it's our turn.

Post by bixaorellana on Sept 18, 2015 16:51:31 GMT

AMEN to that.

Why should fit young men stay and die pointlessly? Civilians and combatants alike are being killed by shelling and rocket fire, including airstrikes which can only be carried out by the government? On which side -- especially since there are more than two sides -- are these men supposed to fight?

Post by onlyMark on Sept 18, 2015 16:52:39 GMT

Post by kerouac2 on Sept 18, 2015 16:57:42 GMT

Just one, but I would gladly house refugees if I had the space. So I have only given money so far, and I will giving more soon. I think that giving space to refugees is one of the greatest things that we can do in this selfish and self centered decade.

When my grandparents and mother were refugees in the 1940's, they were sheltered more than once by complete strangers when they were on the road with their little suitcases.

Post by rikita on Sept 18, 2015 21:52:13 GMT

i think the fact that the majority is men has among other things to do with that a lot of them might want to flee from the danger of being recruited by different fighting factions. and i can completely understand that. why don't they stay and fight is easy to say for anyone who is not being asked to kill and run risk of getting killed. i have no idea what i'd do - i am not a fighting type of person (and nor are my brothers or father or husband), and while i might feel also a wish to defend my home, the wish to survive would likely be stronger.

of course there are more reasons, dangers of sexual violence during the journey for women, the way men and women are expected to act in different cultures, the men seeing it as their responsibility to face the dangerous journey first and then try to get their wife and children (or mother and siblings) to follow them once they found a place to settle, etc. ... but why would that mean they have no right to flee?

(it's not just in the case of fighting that i think it is somewhat cynical by the way - a friend was told by the person in the state office that refused her attempts to stay here that she should go home and help build up her country, as the war is over - this was a woman in her late thirties with no living relatives, and i was told from other sources that a woman in such a situation in her country is pretty much doomed - so no matter what is thought whether she has a right to stay here or has to go home, telling her she should help build up her country is really cynical when what she will face is a struggle for survival)

Post by questa on Sept 18, 2015 22:26:16 GMT

I'm pretty sure the Vietnamese stayed and put up a strong resistance to the French and then the Americans et al. It was the brutality of their own people they were fleeing in the post-war payback time.

Travel! Set out and head for pastures new[br] Life tastes the richer when you’ve road worn feet.[br]Ibn Battuta[br]

Post by patricklondon on Sept 19, 2015 7:26:59 GMT

There are people who have been specifically ill-treated because of who they are or what they've done, people simply getting out of conflict zones, people getting out of a temporary camp where they aren't allowed to work or set about building a new life, as well as, no doubt, some people with evil intentions and others (though unlikely from Syria) who are simply trying for the main chance.

But if you think this is bad, what's going to happen when climate change really starts to bite in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of Africa?